I am really bothered by the results of a recent poll of engaged couples on the website of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. The poll reveals that 68 percent of respondents held negative attitudes toward discussing money with their fiance. Five percent indicated that talking about money with their fiance would cause them to call off the wedding. Well, guess what? If you can’t talk about your finances with your fiance, you should call off the wedding!

I’ve said this before, and I’ll keep saying it until the message gets through: You can talk about money before you get married—or you can fight over it through the divorce. Court records show that financial issues remain one of the main contributing factors, if not the outright cause, of the conflicts that result in 50 percent of marriages ending in divorce. If the inability to have the money talk causes you to delay, or even cancel, the wedding, good. Better a cancelled wedding than a devastating divorce. I speak not just as a money expert, but from personal experience when I say that the latter is far more costly—and more painful.